31 Days to Query-Ready: How I’ll be Spending the Month of August

If you’re someone who’s come here looking for the regular Wednesday update of The Wind and the Horizon, I’ve got both good and bad news for you.

The bad news is that there won’t be a new chapter today. In fact, there won’t be any new Wednesday chapters for the rest of the month.

But don’t worry! The good news is this isn’t a hiatus; I’ll still be posting new chapters on Fridays.

I know it’s not necessarily ideal, but I swear I have a good reason for slowing things down a bit.

I’ve decided to spend this entire month focusing on getting my 2016 NaNoWriMo manuscript ready to query. Aside from blog posts and my newsletter, I’ll be dropping all of my other projects until September to focus on rewrites and edits on my novel, The Witch’s Patron.

For those keeping score at home, I know I’ve said I’ve been leaning more towards self publish. But this October I’ll be heading to the Surrey International Writer’s Conference (more on that in another blog post) and, along with getting to attend three days of really cool and informative sessions, I’ll also have the chance to network with people in various roles throughout the publishing industry. The more I thought about this opportunity the more I realized it would be a waste to attend without having a polished manuscript in my back pocket ready to go.

Y’know, just in case.

Plus I think it would be a good experience to try querying at least once.

I see you wondering about The Star and the Ocean, but that – and the entire Starborn Series – is a different beast altogether. I have plans for that story that don’t include having it shined up and ready to flaunt in a few months time.

And with that I embark on a month-long writing adventure that will no doubt involve a great deal of caffeine, long nights, and temper tantrums, but will hopefully end up being a good, character building experience by the time it’s all over. I’ve already started sifting through beta notes, mentally preparing myself to rework the story into the best version of itself it can be (or, at least the best version I can make it). I’ll keep you posted on my progress!

In the mean time, please excuse the decrease in TWATH updates. The options were to either maintain the current schedule, which would have meant blowing through the remainder of my buffer and an eventual hiatus come September, or drop down to once a week now and avoid the need for a hiatus later.

Hopefully you feel I made the right choice!

Thanks for understanding – I appreciate your patience. If you have any tips or advice for me with regards to my project with The Witch’s Patron please let me know in the comments!